Turning Your Computer Off At Night vs. Leaving it on 24/7

[NickD 203]

Can only wonder if some actually turn off their computer since they are posting here 24/7. Ever look on the inside of your computer? Makes a wonderful air purifier as tons of dust accumulate on the inside.

Thermal cycling is a problem along with electrical surge especially to the electrolytic capacitors, but all the latest computers really don't shut down like it was when you had a real power switch. What really causes thermal cycling is how much multi-tasking you are doing, the more work you give your processor, the hotter it gets. Take a break and it cools down. But thermal cycling is not a problem, the software people will obsolete your computer before cycling becomes an issue.

If I am not using my computer for 15 minutes, have it set for standby, kills the fan so I don't have to clean the inside of it so often. Wife's boss has a Sony notebook that was killing when used, she trusted me to look at it, was really a chore to remove the heat exchanger in that thing as it was blocked solid with debris. Debris is a nice word for #######.

Have a master power switch on all of my computer systems that kill power to everything, always switch that off when leaving. Did have a CRT monitor that caught on fire, was out of warranty, but thank God, I was home when that happened. Did get a new monitor from the company on the basis that fire did not blow it's fuse, they didn't want a lawsuit against them. And always shut down all the computers at night except when running a long program for engineering, let that baby work it's #### off while I am sleeping. But the bad part of that, is when you switch them on in the morning, get a zillion upgrades that want to load. Solved that, by switching that off.

[Heracles 417]

The biggest issues back in the days was harddrive wear. Not too many people remember the old park the hdd before shutting down days on my Amstrad. Once we all switch to SSD in the next decade, there is basically nothing left to wear apart from semiconductors like the CPU or GPU. Even then, the power they use is being reduced with every model, which means they are less susceptible to heat issues.

My case has a two screen filters which catch a lot of the dust. All I do is push open the air vents in the front and clean the dust accumulate on these screens. A quiet PC is an absolute must for me. The engineering skills came handy when I reprogrammed the fan of the video card to make it silent while idle. Furthermore, positioned a range of slow moving quite fans to draw air from the front and send it out the back and towards the top. I tested 20 fans before finding the ideal enermax fans.

Edited December 1, 2009 by Booyah!

[NickD 203]

Best engineering project I ever had was when no fans were permitted, all components were operated at a maximum of 10% of their power capacity. Fans are the cheapest and dirtiest method to obtain cooling and the most inconvenient for the user where even some components can be operated at over twice of their rated capacity. Bored on a long driving trip, tired of listening to music, counted all the fans in my home and lab, came up to 112 different fans that required oiling and cleaning. Only a few of my much better test equipment came with filters, those are very expensive to replace by the way.

Did redo a 386 with a co-processor, was a $5,000 box, added sound deadening insulation, broke the common from the AC ground, still don't know why they do that, and added easier to clean filters. Was a wasted effort, that box was shortly obsoleted by the 486 and was only worth ten bucks on the market. So I don't do that anymore.

Just open up my boxes, go outside with an air hose and create a 30's type dust storm outside. Do this at night when the neighbors are asleep.

[Captain Oates 911]

You have an electric stove I presume. If not an electric kettle. If you have an electric kettle where did you get it?

You can make it boil faster by using less water, enough just for that specific need. Or, move to a colder place at lower altitude where the air mass is heavy like here in New England.

Blame Nickolai Tesla for using 120 volts standard.

Chuckle - I bought the kettle at Target when I lived near Clearwater Florida.. must be some Brits around there.

The first one bust so i took it back to customer services. The lady manager did the credit and she picked it up and said 'what is it anyway ?'

I told her it was a kettle and she shrugged...

I bought some egg cups too - I had to mail order em. With an egg cup and a kettle, an Englishman can have a life.

Actually there is a 240v supply to the house - i think the hot water tank and a/c runs off it - but no plug outlets.

I was tempted to tap into it for a kettle supply point but I would probably end up doing 465 years without parole in Federal Prison and facing a Congressional enquiry, so I force myself to be patient with the 120v set up.

Edited December 1, 2009 by saywhat

[NickD 203]

You have an electric stove I presume. If not an electric kettle. If you have an electric kettle where did you get it?

You can make it boil faster by using less water, enough just for that specific need. Or, move to a colder place at lower altitude where the air mass is heavy like here in New England.

Blame Nickolai Tesla for using 120 volts standard.

Chuckle - I bought the kettle at Target when I lived near Clearwater Florida.. must be some Brits around there.

The first one bust so i took it back to customer services. The lady manager did the credit and she picked it up and said 'what is it anyway ?'

I told her it was a kettle and she shrugged...

I bought some egg cups too - I had to mail order em. With an egg cup and a kettle, an Englishman can have a life.

Actually there is a 240v supply to the house - i think the hot water tank and a/c runs off it - but no plug outlets.

I was tempted to tap into it for a kettle supply point but I would probably end up doing 465 years without parole in Federal Prison and facing a Congressional enquiry, so I force myself to be patient with the 120v set up.

It's worse to bring electrical equipment to England than to bring it here, while you are at 220VAC, its 50 Hertz where our standard is 60 Hz, that lower frequency ha a lower inductive reactance where US equipment will overheat. I designed equipment for Great Britain, we had to get an inverter with a crystal controlled oscillator to produce that 50 Hz line frequency for testing. Practically all switch mode equipment designed today works fine from 100 to 240 VAC, 50-60 Hz, but need a power plug adapter for your strange plugs, well, strange to us. Venezuela is really screwed up, they use kind of half and half European and American.

My home and lab are wired for 120/240VAC, 240 V outlets are readily available, some of my equipment operates off of 240 VAC, air compressor, welder, various power supplies, but what we don't have that I really miss is three phase AC. Three phase AC motors are the simplest and most efficient of any motor made, all single phase AC motors require a troublesome start up circuit even to run and are far more inefficient due to this. For electronic equipment, after fullwave rectification, the ripple voltage is only 5% so you don't require those large expensive filter capacitors, practically almost a pure DC output. Your car alternator is three phase for that exact reason, but your battery filters out that final 5% of ripple.

Can buy a three phase inverter, expensive as it would be to convert all my motors to three phase, but would be much cheaper in the long run if we all had three phase.

The trend now for Energy Star appliances is using an inverter driven motor, considered that for my new furnace, would even get a kickback of 150 bucks from my electric company if I got that. Does this make sense, getting money back to use a bit less electricity? But I decided to stick with a standard 120 VAC blower motor, far less expensive, only uses a fraction more energy, and what really helped me to make a decision, is when I looked at the parts replacement cost for the inverter driven motor. Over five times the price of the energy star motor, and reviews of this technology, lots of problems with it.

But we would save a lot of energy if we had three phase.

[Heracles 417]

Ahh good old three phase. Miss the old 415V there. I did notice that things like compressors and so on could be much smaller when they operated off three-phase.

The beauty of 240V in Aus is that it delivers 2400 watts per outlet using 10 amps. Whereas, we need to up the amps here to dangerous levels to deliver even 1800 watts. Electric ovens and air-conditioning units in Aus are able to use 20 amp circuits delivering 4,800 watts. As I said earlier, I never ever noticed a brownout or the dimming of a light when an appliance was turned on there. Higher voltages also allow electronics like power supplies to perform more efficiently.

[*Robert* 2]

I guess since all you tax payers out there are paying for our electricity, all the PCs on AF bases are left on, and probably DoD wide.

Seriously, they tell us to log off, but to leave our PCs on. That way if the IT dept has to push a patch overnight, they can.

[Captain Oates 911]

When we turn the iron on, all the lights dim on this circuit which is the computer room.

It's like alcatraz on sizzling day

I bought 2 uninterruptible power supplies and the computers run great - for $30 or so the problem was solved.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I guess since all you tax payers out there are paying for our electricity, all the PCs on AF bases are left on, and probably DoD wide.

Seriously, they tell us to log off, but to leave our PCs on. That way if the IT dept has to push a patch overnight, they can.

Thanks, brother Robert. I'll bring this up at the next Tea Party meeting.

[Ban Hammer 13,481]

I guess since all you tax payers out there are paying for our electricity, all the PCs on AF bases are left on, and probably DoD wide.

Seriously, they tell us to log off, but to leave our PCs on. That way if the IT dept has to push a patch overnight, they can.

which seems to be quite often around here

[NickD 203]

When we turn the iron on, all the lights dim on this circuit which is the computer room.

It's like alcatraz on sizzling day

I bought 2 uninterruptible power supplies and the computers run great - for $30 or so the problem was solved.

I have 200 amp service with the power transformer mounted on a pad on the easement in my backyard, planted evergreens around it so I don't have to look at it. My rich kid son had 400 amp service installed in his new home, hate to see his electric bill. But been in many places where a two fuse box was used with extension cords all over the floor. Practically all of our old downtown is that way with 2,200 V overhead lines running all over the place. Don't fly a kite in those areas. Our electric rates have doubled over the last two years, primarily because of OPEC oil prices, doesn't do any good to complain about that. Most of our energy is from hydro, two nuclear plants were shut down, so the new plants run on natural gas. Thinking about going back to gas lightning like they did in the days before Edison, would be cheaper for me. Now to design a gas operated refrigerator, computer, and a TV set.

DOT came through our town and installed a ton of these 250 watt mercury vapor lights, town is brighter at night, but don't forget to turn your headlamps on in your vehicle, will be stopped by the cops. Also installed a ton of traffic signals, so takes twice as long to get anywhere spending most of it behind a red light even though not another vehicle in sight. Oh, that increased our property taxes, but not as bad as that baby sitting school system we have.

If you want your kids to get good grades, have to teach them yourself. One trick I taught them was to read and memorized the subtitles and the sidebars in their text books, the teachers are too lazy to read the text to make up their tests.

Much of locally generated electricity is going to Milwaukee and Madison, Madison in particular, they don't like those messy power plants in their town. And what the heck, that is where our leadership comes from.

[Captain Oates 911]

used to live in Hubertus, Milwaukee and visit Madison so I know the drill !

I would really miss this 'for nothing' electricity from the 2 huge hydro dams here. With global warming - oops I mean the alleged warming, the snowfall in Canada is less and the power of the river is diminished. Luckily the recession has dropped demand and masked it. After the recession and with even less snow, we might end up paying $40 a month all included.

Education - I bought all the past exam papers and worked out the probability of questions based on that - and only studied the likely questions. There are whole sections of the syllabus I never looked at. It worked a treat.

Wouldn't recommend it for electrical studies/ pilot's exams/brain surgeons/hangmen !

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Best engineering project I ever had was when no fans were permitted, all components were operated at a maximum of 10% of their power capacity. Fans are the cheapest and dirtiest method to obtain cooling and the most inconvenient for the user where even some components can be operated at over twice of their rated capacity. Bored on a long driving trip, tired of listening to music, counted all the fans in my home and lab, came up to 112 different fans that required oiling and cleaning. Only a few of my much better test equipment came with filters, those are very expensive to replace by the way.

Did redo a 386 with a co-processor, was a $5,000 box, added sound deadening insulation, broke the common from the AC ground, still don't know why they do that, and added easier to clean filters. Was a wasted effort, that box was shortly obsoleted by the 486 and was only worth ten bucks on the market. So I don't do that anymore.

Just open up my boxes, go outside with an air hose and create a 30's type dust storm outside. Do this at night when the neighbors are asleep.

Whatever! I like when my PC sounds like a vacuum cleaner.... By the way I bought a new case last year with filters on the cheap and it IS funny that after about 2 weeks the front air intake is absolutely white with dust.

Edited December 1, 2009 by Sousuke

[Captain Oates 911]

Whatever! I like when my PC sounds like a vacuum cleaner.... By the way I bought a new case last year with filters on the cheap and it IS funny that after about 2 weeks the front air intake is absolutely white with dust.

Just built a computer with a AMD phenom 2 chip

It runs so cool it hardly needs a fan

I never thought of using my 3.5hp leaf blower to clean the computer - everything is big in america

[Niels Bohr 72]

Speaking of the 486 chips, they are still being used in DSP, ASICs application. I remembered the optical mouses using a variant of the 486 chip.

The transistors do wear down over time. I hadn't done analysis on them for awhile but they are subject to various physical conditions that will cause them to break down.

Sometimes when the CPU breaks down, you don't even know it. The L2 Cache may fry, and yet your computer still run fine. However, because of the L2 cache being fried, your computer will run slower. Maybe 50% slower than what I can run at if the L2 Cache was still active.